This invention relates generally to systems and methods for collecting and distributing manufacturing information, in general, and to systems and methods for collecting and distributing information within a semiconductor manufacturing fabrication environment.
Semiconductor device manufacturing is fast becoming disaggregated as companies focus on core competencies and contract out all other work. The result is the proliferation of so-called xe2x80x9cfablessxe2x80x9d semiconductor manufacturers.
In many instances, fabless semiconductor companies have their operations and data spread across a global supply chain. By way of example, a fabless company may design a chip with engineers located in California, have the wafers (each consisting of many devices) fabricated in Taiwan, have wafer testing occur in Taiwan, yet have assembly of the device occur in Malaysia and the characterization and qualification occur in California. To meet short market windows of opportunity, a fabless semiconductor company""s information systems must support rapid decision-making. Otherwise, yield loss at any node in the supply chain causes a loss of revenue and increased work in progress material.
Fabless semiconductor companies face a number of challenges in getting product to market in a timely manner. Moving new components out of design, into prototypes and finally into production to meet a market window is critical to success. If engineering productivity does not keep pace with design and manufacturing complexities, the result is lost opportunities. Tracking quality to optimize yield is more important and proportionately more difficult across the distributed supply chain of a fabless manufacturer. Compounding the difficulty is a rapidly shrinking product life cycle that makes timely sharing of semiconductor data across remote locations in a timely manner even more critical.
In the past, when a product is outsourced for an individual operation, and is returned to the processing facility, a hard table or printout of the data associated with that operation is typically returned with the product. Similarly, a semiconductor device completed at the fabrication facility may be shipped to an assembly facility where it is actually bonded to external wires and packaged. It would be desirable to be able to integrate this data with the data from the processing facility to have a better understanding of failure mechanisms within the device.
It is desirable to provide a means that will help product engineers identify and act quickly on chip manufacturing issues so that designs may move quickly from concept to final product in the shortest amount of time and in an economically viable way.
It is therefore desirable to provide a platform for aggregation of data from geographically diverse sources, automating the management of the data, analyzing the data to solve design and manufacturing problems, and for providing interpretive advice where applicable. With such a platform, product engineers and operations managers may be provided with meaningful data that will be used to make good decisionsxe2x80x94decisions that make the difference between profit and loss.
Such data should include device characterization data and production monitoring data. Device characterization is performed to insure that a part functions over the complete operating range (e.g., ambient temperature, power supply voltages, clock frequency, etc.) specified for the product.
A system in accordance with the present invention provides characterization and production monitoring information for semiconductor products. The system includes a plurality of data sources, each providing data pertaining to the products. A server is coupleable to each data source. A database is coupled to the server for storing data from the data sources. An automatic data collection engine at the server automatically collects data from the sources. A characterization engine resident at the server operates on the data to provide characterization information. A reporting application engine operable at the server generates characterization reports from the characterization information. The characterization reports are selectable. The system provides a platform that integrates and analyzes information from chip design, fabrication, and test. Utilizing an Internet or worldwide web based interface, database and statistical tools, the platform provides immediate access to manufacturing data and automates critical analysis enabling engineers to identify and solve manufacturing issues.
The present invention provides an interactive analysis and data management solution that is particularly advantageous to fabless semiconductor companies. The platform provided by the invention automatically captures data from all semiconductor manufacturing data sources required for engineering analysis. Data types supported by the illustrative embodiment of the invention include lot, wafer, and equipment history, defect, electrical test, metrology, wafer sort and final test.
With a platform in accordance with the principles of the invention, operations managers and product engineers are able to detect and solve manufacturing issues as they occur. The platform in accordance with the invention eliminates time-consuming data translation and validation by automating all data collection activities. The platform provides an intuitive user interface and powerful statistical engine to enable users to quickly correlate data, thus accelerating problem identification and resolution. All analysis and reports created by a platform in accordance with the principles of the invention may be viewed, manipulated and published using standard computer applications software.
The present invention includes a device characterization and production monitoring program that uniquely helps design and product engineers manage, visualize, and analyze the massive amount of data typically created to support verification of a device.